Annie Peters

by Annie Peters

A young man falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl he discovers in a Northern European peat bog. A young woman unwittingly becomes the human host of a Joshua tree, while her boyfriend struggles to understand this startling change in their budding relationship. During a nostalgic visit to a tornado auction, an old man impulsively buys and rears one last tornado as he reviews his life choices. A woman strikes a bargain to breastfeed the devil to protect her unborn son.

These are just a few of the brilliantly inventive premises of Karen Russell’s wonderful new collection of short stories. However, Orange World and Other Stories is so much more than fresh plots. Russell ties these seemingly disparate tales together with a pervading theme of alienation: from the past, from family, from nature. Furthermore, despite their surreal nature, Russell grounds each story in human experience, both poignant and hilarious in turn. In “Orange World,” a mother is desperate to protect her infant son after the pain of repeated miscarriage. In “Bog Girl: A Romance,” another mother makes the same remarks about her son’s new, albeit dead, girlfriend that mothers around the world have made. Underlying all of this is the exquisite beauty of Russell’s sentences, which will repeatedly surprise readers with their imagery and masterful language.

Having received her MFA from Columbia, Russell has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Winner of numerous awards and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Russell is already the bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Without a doubt, Orange World and Other Stories is destined for a similar fate. For lovers of excellent writing, this book should not be missed.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

The Museum of Modern Love

Review by Annie Peters

by Annie Peters

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, December 2018

Arky Levin, a 50-year-old film score composer, has reached a strange moment in his life. Recently separated from his wife under disconcerting circumstances and estranged from his only child, Arky finds himself alone in a new apartment in New York and purposefully cut off from friends. This should provide the silence he craves to write his latest film score, but instead he just feels lost. In this frame of mind, he visits the Museum of Modern Art and discovers a performance piece called The Artist Is Present, based on a real 2010 performance by renowned artist Marina Abramović. In this piece, Abramović sits for 75 days at a table as throngs of visitors stand for hours to take turns sitting across from her, still and silent.

Using Abramović’s seven steps for creative projects—awareness, resistance, submission, work, reflection, courage and the gift—as an organizational device for her novel, author Heather Rose details the performance’s almost mystical effect on Arky and an array of other characters as they return to the piece day after day. Other characters include Abramović herself, a young Ph.D. student from Amsterdam, a recent widow from the South, a radio personality and even Abramović’s late mother, each of whom brings his or her own unique experiences and responses to the piece.

Already a winner of several literary prizes in Australia and short-listed for the Australian Literary Society’s 2017 Gold Medal, The Museum of Modern Love is an engaging, multifaceted meditation on the meaning of life and art. Rose sets this exploration in the context of one man’s compelling midlife search for direction as he observes Abramović’s fleeting art, which the novel intriguingly brings back to life. This is a brilliant find for any reader who enjoys grappling with the larger questions of life and literature, and it is an excellent choice for book clubs seeking thought-provoking discussion.

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Labyrinth of the Spirits

Review by Annie Peters

by Annie Peters

Carlos Ruiz Zafón returns for the fourth and final time to his gothic Barcelona and (every book lover’s fantasy) the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. In The Labyrinth of the Spirits, Zafón introduces Alicia Gris, a fierce, courageous but damaged young woman who was orphaned during the Spanish Civil War and recruited to become a member of the Spanish secret police. Already disillusioned at 29 with the darker demands of her work, Alicia reluctantly agrees to investigate one final case for her boss, Leandro Montalvo, in exchange for her freedom. She and her partner, Juan Manuel Vargas, must investigate the disappearance of Spain’s Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls.

When Alicia discovers a copy of a rare book by Victor Mataix hidden in Valls’ desk, she and Vargas start down a twisting path that leads them back to Barcelona and eventually reveals connections between Valls’ mysterious disappearance and a series of atrocities committed years earlier during the corrupt Franco regime. At the same time, Alicia must confront her own complicated past, which includes a return to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War provides the perfect setting for Zafón’s novel, with its shadowed, misty labyrinth of streets, foreboding buildings and sinister sense of corruption. The plot is exquisitely intricate, like an elaborate steampunk timepiece. Alicia, a fragile but ferociously formidable, vampire-like seductress, is unforgettable. The pacing is exceptional, with its incessant, rolling waves of tension. Even the dialogue is remarkably sharp and fresh.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits is a masterpiece more than worthy of sharing a shelf with its bestselling predecessors, The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game and The Prisoner of Heaven. For those who have read Zafón’s earlier novels, some loose ends are finally resolved. Readers’ one regret will be that Labyrinth is the last in this ingenious cycle.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Debut Fiction, Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller Debut Fiction

Who is in my house?

Review by Annie Peters

by Annie Peters

In Our House, Fiona Lawson returns home from a long weekend, only to discover movers unloading a van full of another family’s belongings into her tony Trinity Avenue home. Stranger still, her belongings and those of her two sons have vanished, and this new family insists they own the house, although Fiona never put it on the market. From this unsettling scenario, British author Louise Candlish proceeds to masterfully spool out the complicated series of events that led Fiona and Bram, her estranged husband with whom she shares the home in a “bird’s nest” co-parenting arrangement, to reach this shocking moment.

Candlish tells a large part of the story through a podcast called “The Victim,” which Fiona narrates, and through a Word document written by Bram, both in retrospect. The podcast and Word document give the reader the opportunity to hear Fiona’s and Bram’s differing perceptions of the events as they unfold. This narrative structure also allows the reader to feel the full weight of the characters’ emotions, from Fiona’s initial utter perplexity to Bram’s almost fatalistic resignation, and to discover the deep-rooted origins of their relationship’s complexities. Allowing the reader to plumb these depths gives the plot real plausibility. What seems outlandishly far-fetched at first slowly becomes uncomfortably conceivable and makes this novel nearly impossible to put aside.

Candlish is the author of 12 novels, and she makes her U.S. publishing debut with Our House, a frightening journey that will leave readers wondering if this could happen to them. The novel is a clear demonstration of Candlish’s considerable skill as a writer, and is sure to garner a new throng of fans here in the States.

Debut Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction Debut Fiction

A healer’s secrets

Review by Annie Peters

by Annie Peters

In the spring of 1603, Elizabeth I of England is just days from death. While others flee her court to jockey for positions under the future king, Frances Gorges stays by the old queen’s side. There, while dreaming of returning to her family estate and their gardens full of medicinal plants, Frances uses her considerable knowledge of plants and healing to comfort the queen.

Young Frances’ dream of returning home proves short-lived, however, when her ambitious uncle forces her to take a position as a lady to the new king’s young daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Once installed, Frances witnesses the utter debauchery of the king’s court. At the same time, she must tread lightly through endless political intrigues, as the king’s intolerant Puritanism makes it deadly to be called a Catholic or a witch. While the Privy Seal, Lord Cecil, would delight in revealing Frances as a witch for her healing powers, another courtier close to her, Tom Wintour, has a hand in organizing the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Can Frances survive and protect those she loves in such treacherous times?

Tracy Borman has a Ph.D in history and is England’s joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces and chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust. She clearly knows her history. Masterfully set in a tumultuous time with well-crafted characters, The King’s Witch is a wonderful first novel that is difficult to put aside. Borman makes historical figures, such as the insecure King James and the intelligent, honorable Tom Wintour come to life on the page. Readers will root for the fictional Frances, who faces impossible odds at times but never loses her sense of self.

The first book of a trilogy, The King’s Witch will have its readers waiting impatiently for the next two volumes.